not less proud of a youth whose great powers, first essayed in this conflict, afterward troubled the Church and the State during forty eventful years, Francis Atterbury. By such men as these every question in issue between the papists and the Protestants was debated, sometimes in a popular style which boys and women could comprehend, sometimes with the utmost subtlety of logic, and sometimes with an immense display of learning. The pretensions of the Holy See, the authority of tradition, purgatory, transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass, the adoration of the host, the denial of the cup to the laity, confession, penance, indulgences, extreme unction, the invocation of saints, the adoration of images, the celibacy of the clergy, the monastic vows, the practice of celebrating public worship in a tongue unknown to the multitude, the corruptions of the court of Rome, the history of the Refor mation, the characters of the chief Reformers, were copiously discussed. Great numbers of absurd legends about miracles wrought by saints and relics were translated from the Italian, and published as specimens of the priestcraft by which the greater part of Christendom had been fooled. Of the tracts put forth on these subjects by Anglican divines during the short reign of James the Second, many have probably perished. Those which may still be found in our great libraries make up a mass of near twenty thousand pages.*

The Roman Catholics did not yield the victory without a struggle. One of them, named Henry Hills, had been appointed printer to the royal household and chapel, and had been placed by the king at the head of a great office in London, from which theological tracts came forth by hundreds. Obadiah Walker's press was not less active at Oxford. But, with the exception of some bad translations of Bossuet's admirable works, these establishments put forth

* This I can attest from my own researches. There is an excellent collection in the British Museum. Birch tells us, in his Life of Tillotson, that Archbishop Wake had not been able to form even a perfect catalogue of all the tracts published in this controversy.

nothing of the smallest value. It was indeed impossible for any intelligent and candid Roman Catholic to deny that the champions of his Church were in every talent and acquirement completely overmatched. The ablest of them would not, on the other side, have been considered as of the third rate. Many of them, even when they had something to say, knew not how to say it. They had been excluded by their religion from English schools and universities; nor had they ever, till the accession of James, found England an agreeable, or even a safe residence. They had therefore passed the greater part of their lives on the Continent, and had almost unlearned their mother tongue. When they preached, their outlandish accent moved the derision of the audience. They spelt like washerwomen. Their diction was disfigured by foreign idioms; and, when they meant to be eloquent, they imitated, as well as they could, what was considered as fine writing in those Italian academies where rhetoric had then reached the last stage of corruption. Disputants laboring under these disadvantages would scarcely, even with truth on their side, have been able to make head against men whose style is eminently distinguished by simple purity and grace.*

* Cardinal Howard spoke strongly to Burnet at Rome on this subject. Burnet, i., 662. There is a curious passage to the same effect in a dispatch of Barillon, but I have mislaid the reference.

One of the Roman Catholic divines who engaged in this controversy, a Jesuit named Andrew Pulton, whom Mr. Oliver, in his biography of the order, pronounces to have been a man of distinguished ability, very frankly owns his deficiencies. "A. P. having been eighteen years out of his own country, pretends not yet to any perfection of the English expression or orthography." His orthography is indeed deplorable. In one of his letters wright is put for write, woed for would. He challenged Tennison to dispute with him in Latin, that they might be on equal terms.

Another Roman Catholic, named William Clench, wrote a treatise on the pope's supremacy, and dedicated it to the queen in Italian. The following specimen of his style may suffice. "O del sagro marito fortunata consorte! O dolce alleviamento d'affari alti! O grato ristoro di pensieri noiosi, nel cui petto latteo, lucente specchio d' illibata matronal pudicizia, nel cui seno odorato, come in porto d' amor, si ritira il Giacomo! O beata regia coppia! O felice inserto tra l' invincibil leoni e le candide aquile!"

The situation of England in the year 1686 can not be better described than in the words of the French embassador. "The discontent," he wrote, "is great and general, but the fear of incurring still worse evils restrains all who have any thing to lose. The king openly expresses his joy at finding himself in a situation to strike bold strokes. He likes to be complimented on this subject. He has talked to me about it, and has assured me that he will not flinch."*

Meanwhile, in other parts of the empire events of grave importance had taken place. The situation of the Episcopalian Protestants of Scotland differed widely from that in which their English brethren stood. In the south of the island the religion of the state was the religion of the people, and had a strength altogether independent of the strength derived from the support of the government. The Conformists were far more numerous than the papists and the Protestant Dissenters taken together. The established church of Scotland was the church of a small minority. The majority of the lowland population was firmly attached to the Presbyterian discipline. Prelacy was abhorred by the great body of Scottish Protestants, both as an unscriptural and as a foreign institution. It was regarded by the disciples of Knox as a relic of the abominations of Babylon the Great. It painfully reminded a people proud of the memory of Wallace and Bruce, that Scotland, since her sovereigns had succeeded to a fairer inheritance, had been independent only in name. The episcopal polity was also closely associated in the public mind with all the evils produced by twenty-five years of corrupt and cruel maladministration. Neverthe

Clench's English is of a piece with his Tuscan. For example, "Peter signifies an inexpugnable rock, able to evacuate all the plots of hell's divan, and naufragate all the lurid designs of empoisoned heretics."

Another Roman Catholic treatise, entitled "The Church of England truly represented," begins by informing us that "the ignis fatuus of reformation, which had grown to a comet by many acts of spoil and rapine, had been ushered into England, purified of the filth which it had contracted among the lakes of the Alps." * Barillon, July, 1686.

less, this polity stood, though on a narrow basis and amid fearful storms, tottering indeed, yet upheld by the civil magistrate, and leaning for support, whenever danger became serious, on the power of England. The records of the Scottish Parliament were thick set with laws denouncing vengeance on those who in any direction strayed from the prescribed pale. By an act passed in the time of Knox, and breathing his spirit, it was a high crime to hear mass, and the third offense was capital.* An act recently passed, at the instance of James, made it death to preach in any Presbyterian conventicle whatever, and even to attend such a conventicle in the open air.† The Eucharist was not, as in England, degraded into a civil test; but no person could hold any office, could sit in Parliament, or could even vote for a member of Parliament, without subscribing, under the sanction of an oath, a declaration which condemned in the strongest terms the principles both of the papists and of the Covenanters.‡

In the Privy Council of Scotland there were two parties corresponding to the two parties which were contending against each other at Whitehall. William Douglas,

duke of Queensberry, was lord treasurer, and had, during some years, been considered as first minister. He was nearly connected by affinity, by similarity of opinions, and by similarity of temper, with the treasurer of England. Both were Tories; both were men of hot temper and strong prejudices; both were ready to support their master in any attack on the civil liberties of his people; but both were sincerely attached to the Established Church. Queensberry had early notified to the court that, if any innovation affecting that church were contemplated, to such innovation he could be no party. But among his colleagues were several men not less unprincipled than Sunderland. In truth, the council chamber at Edinburgh had been, during a quarter of a century, a seminary of all public and private vices; and some of the politicians whose * Act Parl., Aug. 24, 1560; Dec. 15, 1567.

Act Parl., May 8, 1685.

Act Parl., Aug. 31, 1681.

character had been formed there had a peculiar hardness of heart and forehead to which Westminster, even in that bad age, could hardly show any thing quite equal. The chancellor, James Drummond, earl of Perth, and his brother, the secretary of state, John Lord Melfort, were bent on supplanting Queensberry. The chancellor had already an unquestionable title to the royal favor. He had brought into use a little steel thumb-screw which gave such exquisite torment that it had wrung confessions even out of men on whom his majesty's favorite boot had been tried in vain.* But it was well known that even barbarity was not so sure a way to the heart of James as apostasy. To apostasy, therefore, Perth and Melfort resorted with a certain audacious baseness which no English statesman could hope to emulate. They declared that the papers found in the strong box of Charles the Second had converted them both to the true faith; and they began to confess and to hear mass.† How little conscience had to do with Perth's change of religion he amply proved by taking to wife, a few weeks later, in direct defiance of the laws of the Church which he had just joined, a lady who was his cousin-german, without waiting for a dispensation. When the good pope learned this, he said, with scorn and indignation which well became him, that he wanted no such proselytes.‡ But James was more easily satisfied. The apostates presented themselves at Whitehall, and there received such assurances of his favor that they ventured to bring direct charges against the treasurer. Those charges, however, were so evidently frivolous that James was forced to acquit the accused minister; and many thought that the chancellor had ruined himself by his malignant eagerness to ruin his rival. There were some, however, who judged more correctly. Halifax, to whom Perth expressed some apprehensions, answered with a sneer that there was no danger. "Be of good cheer, my lord; thy faith hath made thee whole." The predic

tion was correct.

Perth and Melfort went back to Ed

* Burnet, i., 584.

t Ibid., i., 652, 653.

+ Ibid., i., 678.